IT OPENS with a song about trying to connect - even if it is not the wisest course of action - with all the odds stacked against you: “Let’s move now before we’re back below.”
In these days of the pandemic, ‘The Turning Of Our Bones’ is grimly apt, showing Arab Strap have lost none of their bleak humour; nor does their idiosyncratic spoken word meets indie-rock guitar style sound dated.
So often, on this collection - Aidan Moffat and Malcolm Middleton’s first in 16 years - they are unnervingly insightful about these times.
This is an album about communication and empathy - or the lack of it - and carnal desires, thwarted, sad, and ugly. Both fuse on the unbearably poignant ‘Another Clockwork Day’, about a man who prefers to look at JPGs of his wife when young, rather than be intimate with her now.
'Moffat’s voice’s embodies a masculinity that is gentle, wise, intimate, deep, his half sung, half recited spoken word poetry given well judged backing by Middleton’s guitar work'
‘Fable of The Urban Fox’, a powerful comment on attitudes to immigrants, considers the failure to communicate and show empathy with other human beings; while ‘Tears on Tour’ ponders how, even a man who is not afraid to cry, can still fail to connect with his own emotions.
‘Kebabylon’ muses on a kind of late night revelry that perhaps is not missed in these Covid times, but in its squalor Moffat paints pictures of disadvantage and tragedy with empathy, rather than judgement.
Throughout, Moffat’s voice’s embodies a masculinity that is gentle, wise, intimate, deep, with his half sung, half recited spoken word poetry given well judged backing by Middleton’s guitar work, which draws on a variety of influences (‘Tears on Tour’ fuses ambient drones and lyrical blues guitar; ‘Here Comes The Comus’ sounds like the lovechild of Bryan Adams’ ‘Run To You’ and Kim Carnes ‘Bette Davis Eyes’ ), but is always right for the subject matter Moffat is considering.
The partnership is back and running as well as ever.
